Free Republic

More than two dozen environmental organizations petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to ban the use of natural gas for home heating nationwide, arguing the federal agency must regulate “deadly pollution from heating appliances.” The petition, sponsored by the Sierra Club, claims fossil fuel-fired home furnaces, water heaters, clothes dryers and stoves emit enough nitrogen dioxide (NOx) and carbon dioxide (CO2) that they must be classified as “new stationary sources” of air pollutants, placing them in the same regulatory regime as power plants and factories. The petition resembles – but goes beyond Gov. Jared Polis’ Greenhouse Gas Roadmap for a clean...

Climate Models Overlook Benefits of CO2 and ‘Lukewarming,’ Data Scientist SaysRather than relying on climate change models that could be the basis of expansive and costly regulations, policymakers should instead question those models, focusing on the legitimacy of their underlying assumptions. So said The Heritage Foundation’s chief statistician at a recent climate change conference in Las Vegas that preceded the international summit in Glasgow, Scotland, that concludes today. While the Biden administration continues to pursue regulatory policies based on a concept known as the “social cost of carbon,” increased carbon dioxide emissions have led to a “greening of the planet,”...

In direct contradiction to the scare stories about carbon dioxide being relentlessly pushed by the climate change alarmists, a scientific study published in Nature Climate Change and highlighted by NASA reveals that rising carbon dioxide levels are having a tremendously positive impact on the re-greening of planet Earth over the last three decades, with some regions experiencing over a 50% increase in plant life.The study, entitled, “Greening of the Earth and its drivers,” used satellite data to track and map the expansion of green plant growth across the globe from 1982 – 2015. Published in 2016, this study found that rising atmospheric carbon...

People need to cut back on burgers because they're contributing to climate change, the United Nations said this week. The United Nations Environment Program said research shows that Americans eat about three burgers a week, and if one of those was swapped for "a plant-based alternative burger for one year, it would be like taking the greenhouse gases from 12 million cars off the road for a year." The World Economic Forum blames the beef and dairy industries for churning out more greenhouse gas emissions than oil companies or some countries like Germany. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association argued that...

Among the greatest challenges humankind has faced throughout its history, feeding the world’s hungry ranks at or near the very top of the list. And with the world’s population expected to top nine billion between 2050 and 2100, this issue will surely become even more important in the coming decades. However, what many people may not realize is that the carbon dioxide humans have been pumping into the air since the middle of the 20th century has enriched plant growth, thereby contributing to record crop yields, which has helped to bring about the largest decline in hunger, starvation, and malnutrition...

Authorities in the San Diego area are looking for a man who allegedly poured liquid plant food onto an unopened water jug. The jugs, delivered by Sparkletts, were sitting on the couple's front porch when their home surveillance camera captured the trespasser, saving them from potential harm. ... Tina Gagne said the incident occurred just after midnight Tuesday. Gagne and her wife said they did not recognize the man and don't know why he would have targeted their home.

During the last ice age, too little atmospheric carbon dioxide almost eradicated mankindGuest Essay by Dennis T. AveryAside from protests by Al Gore, Leonardo Di Caprio and friends, the public didn’t seem to raise its CO2 anguish much above the Russians-election frenzy when Trump exited the Paris Climate Accords.Statistician Bjorn Lomborg had already pointed out that the Paris CO2 emission promises would cost $100 trillion dollars that no one has, and make only a 0.05 degree difference in Earth’s 2100 AD temperature. Others say perhaps a 0.2 degree C (0.3 degrees F) difference, and even that would hold only...

Physicist Howard Hayden, a staunch advocate of sound energy policy, sent me a copy of his letter to the EPA about global warming. The text is also appended below, with permission. As noted in my post Access to Energy, Hayden helped the late, great Petr Beckmann found the dissident physics journal Galilean Electrodynamics (brochures and further Beckmann info here; further dissident physics links). Hayden later began to publish his own pro-energy newsletter, The Energy Advocate, following in the footsteps of Beckmann's own journal Access to EnergyI love Hayden's email sign-off, "People will do anything to save the world ... except...

Known for its liberal politics, Berkeley has racked up a long line of firsts over the years, from taxing sugary drinks to ditching Styrofoam takeout containers. City officials are now considering another novel plan: putting stickers on gas pumps citywide to warn consumers that burning fuel contributes to global warming. The Berkeley City Council is set to vote Tuesday to possibly move forward by early next year with the proposal, among the first of its kind in the U.S. San Francisco is drafting a similar ordinance that the city's Board of Supervisors could vote into law by next spring. Environmental...

While the Obama administration is focused on cutting carbon dioxide emissions to fight global warming, one Utah state lawmaker argues that the U.S. should emit more carbon into the atmosphere. Utah Republican state Rep. Jerry Anderson says there’s not enough carbon in the atmosphere and that levels “really could be much higher and give us a lot of benefit for growing plants.” “We are short of carbon dioxide for the needs of the plants,” Anderson, who’s a retired science teacher, told state lawmakers. “Concentrations reached 600 parts per million at the time of the dinosaurs and they did quite well....

The fate of the world’s forests on a warming planet has long been one of the great unanswered questions about climate change. Now, new research is complicating the picture further, suggesting that big shifts are already under way in how forests work. A paper published Wednesday suggests that trees in at least some parts of the world are having to pull less water out of the ground to achieve a given amount of growth. Some scientists say they believe that this may be a direct response to the rising level of carbon dioxide in the air from human emissions, though...

I think I think too much ...